


Fairy Godmothers

by one_windiga



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Minor Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_windiga/pseuds/one_windiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diana knows that growing up in a hotel isn't easy, but it is interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairy Godmothers

Diana didn't realize that it wasn't normal to grow up in hotels until she was in kindergarten. The teacher gave them all handfuls of crayons and told them to draw their family. All the other kids drew themselves with their loved ones, standing in front of a crude archetypal house, two paned windows next to a front door, all huddling beneath a charmingly triangular roof.

Diana's picture was just of herself and her father, holding hands, little blobby crayon fingers crossing over. There was no house in sight, not even grass under their feet to suggest a yard, someplace constant to play every day. It was only when she saw all of the pictures hanging side-by-side on the tackboard did she realize what was missing from hers.

Still, there were some perks to living in hotels, which Diana grew to enjoy more as she grew up. There was the room service, for one. She wasn't sure if her father wasn't expected to pay or if he simply didn't care how much she spent, but nobody ever cut her off after her fourth plate of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies while lying tumbled on the bed with _Boy Meets World_ on the screen.

She never got yelled at for cleaning her room. Sure, she had to be careful that her things stayed where they belonged so that the maids could clean, but the bed would be fresh every week, towels replaced and folded, little baskets of toiletries and goodies placed attractively on the countertops, and all the windows and mirrors thoroughly scrubbed. She didn't learn how to make her own bed until she was thirteen and too embarrassed by the smear of red in the middle of the sheets to call for housekeeping.

She never was too good at team sports, but she was a killer swimmer and ping-pong player, the only sports that were nearly ubiquitous at hotels that she could practice all the time. Most of her effort went into swimming, though, because she couldn't always count on having a partner to play ping-pong against.

Sometimes, if she was really desperate for a match, she would go wandering down the hotel corridors and chat up the staff. Most of the time it was just friendly small-talk, because nobody really wanted to be caught skiving time off of work just to talk with teenage girls, but every once in a while she'd make a friend.

There was Anita the maid, who had started working at sixteen to help her family out. Diana liked to sit crosslegged on her bed and talk with Anita, stuffing herself with complementary chocolates until well into the night. Jeff the janitor always made sure to greet her when she passed in the hall, and sometimes she could cajole him into playing a match of ping-pong. She always lost against him when he was playing fair, but occasionally he'd let her win just to see her smile. The hotels were just full of unlikely fairy godmothers, people to pass her an extra scoop of ice cream with a wink or to photograph her when she came downstairs for homecoming in the most beautiful blue dress she'd ever seen.

Charlie didn't quite like it at first when she started hanging out with the hotel staff, but she squeezed his elbow and smiled and eventually he gave in, like he always did. No matter which hotels they went to, Charlie was always there. So although she shared everything else with her staff friends, she never shared the secrets Charlie told her, nor the pictures they drew on the walls together late at night when her father was out at business meetings.

After Charlie's funeral, the hotels seemed emptier, colder. The carpet's stupid repeating pattern bothered her like it never did before, and she suddenly hated the bland and tasteless art they hung in the rooms. She wanted to throw the factory vases at happy families that visited on vacation, children scampering around the legs of indulgent parents. She wanted them to break on their heads and shatter into a million pieces, noise and sharp and pain, for them to run out of the hotel screaming and just _leave her alone_.

She didn't.

Instead, she sat on the staircase in the lobby, resting her chin on her knees, and watched them dully as they checked in and went off to their rooms. And when Luz from the kitchen staff came to sit next to her and pressed a cold glass of coke into her hand, it didn't fix everything. But it helped, a little.


End file.
